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The most promising area (imo) is far more basic. How about better application of the knowledge we already have?

I give you the firm biological knowldege surrounding nutrition, smoking, physical activity. We very well know the biological facts surrounding these things,...... but so many people are not guided to practice this knowledge, because society's infrastructure is driven by the profit motives of oral product producers (i.e., tasty foods, tobacco products, etc.)

All our hard-learned biological knowledge goes down the proverbial drain, because leaders are not connected in a serious mindframe to apply it widely.

Sure, we can learn more and more. We can selectively apply it in obscure circles. But until the firm knowledge we uncover is applied in some sort of new human-body/biology committment across all domains of culture, then we likely will destroy ourselves in our wisdom.

Is it the Scientist's job to apply knowledge, though? I agree with your statement, though it leaves me wondering who should be responsible for 'advertising' science. Do Scientists stay in their 'Ivory Tower'?

It seems that unless the thing makes out lives that much easier for minimal disruptance to whatever is already being done, and is low cost and therefore consumer available, there is no Public willingness to accept many things.

And of course there is the perpetual debate with polititians: often what Science says is not easy to accept, and few polits. are willing to put their popularity on the line over what is 'right'.

I often thing it's better that Scientists dont have 'the power' to change things, actually. Prove it first. Show everyone it's worth what you say it is.

What this means is that the real value even of the most stringent laboratory proof goes no further than an ivory tower,... if government does not apply it.

Even more, the isolated island of the laboratory has to be expanded to the world, if that isolated proof is to be prooved grandly across the board.

Again, I have to harp on the tobacco product problem, because tens and tens of thousands of separate studies on the biological dangers of smoking go unheaded by the producers of such products. What really gets me is to see a physical education department head smoking a cig between classes. OR wrose yet, .... recently I saw a student nurse standing under a sign reading SCHOOL OF NURSING, smoking a cig!

This is what I mean by "infrasturcture of society": There's a difference between knowledge and knowledge adequately applied. The application of scientific knowledge seems ultimately outside the hands of the scientists discovering it.

The ideas of science also can have an equally strong anti-marketing team of journalists working to keep things the way they are, regardless of new ideas that clearly point to flaws in old practices.

robertkernodle wrote:The ideas of science also can have an equally strong anti-marketing team of journalists working to keep things the way they are, regardless of new ideas that clearly point to flaws in old practices.

Such as the idea of human biological health being influenced by consistent consumption and exertion patterns NOT involving popping pills.

Such as alternative practices of treating diseases that do not involve questionable surgeries.

Such as theories of everything in physics that posit entities that have NO chance in h*** of ever being observed in the world of human perception (yep, I'm bashing string theory a bit here,... so arrogant of me!)

Such as the concept of antropogenic global warming which the most precise interpretation of all the data does NOT seem to support.

There are people who promote with champion persuasive skills such ideas as human-caused global warming, ... health preferentially by means of pharmaceuticals,.... reality built on little vibrating strings and brains that nobody can ever conceive of confirming within the observational capabilities of the human body, ......